Inventor Dahir Semenov from Russia has reinvented airborne travel with the flying train. This incredible form of transportation can travel at speeds up to 400 miles per hour and can transport up to 2,000 passengers. Semenov says that his invention could improve the efficiency of existing public transportation but experts have yet to be fully convinced.
The flying train will still travel by rail, but will be flying several hundred feet off of the ground and is magnetically attached to a current collector, like an electronic arm, that secures the train onto the rail as it flies down the track.
Among those skeptical about the flying train is Norman Garrick, a professor at the University of Connecticut who specializes in sustainable transportation and urban planning. He said that future advances in transportation will likely depend less on radical new vehicles than on new ways to use existing ones – such as car – and bike-sharing programs and now electric scooter sharing.
“A lot of what is needed is not about necessarily new objects because we have a lot of objects that work,” said Garrick, “It is a matter of how we manage those kinds of things.”
Cargo train platform with freight train container with cargo airplane at depot in port use for export logistics background.
“Many transportation dreams from the past have never been realized – such as Fritz Lang’s futuristic cityscape for his groundbreaking 1927 film, ‘Metropolis,’ and his aerial monorails and compact flying vehicles,” said Carlo Ratti, the director of MIT’s Senseable City Lab and an expert on the future of transportation. “It might be hard to integrate flying trains into existing transportation networks, he continued in the email adding that “the flying trains top speed sounded optimistic.
Though many seem opposed to the idea of a new form of transportation, Semenov seems to be continuing forward with his idea as planned.